Yeah, in case you hadn’t seen it, I just spoiled the ending for you. Logan dies. It happens in the best of comic book families, to the best of characters. It happens to the best of creators, too.

Today, Marvel Comics immortal, Stan Lee found out “what it feels like”, at the age of 95. Every corner of the Internet blew up all at once with the news. My corner, especially. Most of the posts from my friends mention something about their childhood.

Mine does not.

That’s because Stan Lee’s Marvel Universe meant nothing to me as a child. You see, I geeked late in life, comparatively. Stan Lee’s Universe only came to mean something to me as a tired, jaded old man who came to see his need of larger-than-life heroes to show him a path never before taken.

In particular, James Logan. The Wolverine. A tired, jaded old man on final approach for eternity. A lot like his creator, Stan Lee. Last year, the cinematic character of Wolverine passed from this life in a brutally beautiful blaze of character glory.

Today, Stan Lee followed along, as quietly as Logan at the end of his own story. Stan Lee always reminded me of Logan, in life, and now in death. And now I admit, publicly, why James Logan… The Wolverine… is my favorite Marvel character.

And why I remain in no hurry to know what two larger-than-life characters know, but less afraid of that knowledge for their existing, in the real world, and the world imagined.

Thank you Stan, for James Logan. Thank you for being the inspiration of my latter years more than my first.

if you’re interested enough to read. But no book tells the whole story. You need to be the story to know it. Maybe one day you’ll tell someone, a stranger, a friend… doesn’t matter… “I read that book, once”. But you didn’t know the story.